menu_book Chapter 5

Chapter 4 of Epics of American History, Division and Reunion, 1829-1889, by Woodrow Wilson. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Administration of Van Buren, 1837-1841. 48, Financial Crisis, 1837. The financial storm had already fairly begun to break upon the country when Van Buren assumed the chief post of the federal government. Business was already upon the threshold of the crisis of 1837.

The volume of paper currency which had gone west for the purchase of lands was thrown back upon the east for redemption or to add still further to the plethora of circulation already existing there. Credit had received a stunning blow, under which it first staggered and then fell. There was a sudden rise in prices. There had been a very rapid increase in the amount of imports since 1832, and considerable sums of specie had been sent abroad to meet balances.

Flour rose from $5.1834 to $11 per barrel, 1837. Corn from 53 cents to $1.15 per bushel. In February and March 1837, there were bread riots in New York. The banks were everywhere driven to a suspension of specie payments, the deposit banks going down with the rest in May. On May 15, the President called an extra session of Congress for the first Monday in September to consider measures of relief.

So far as he himself was concerned, the President evidently did not believe that relief should be sought in an abandonment of the policy of the species circular. He himself issued a circular of similar import with regard to the transactions of the Post Office Department, and when Congress met, he had no suggestion of retreat to make. Silas Wright of New York was the authoritative spokesman of the administration. He had hinted at the advisability of a currency, Holy Metallic, in 1834, in the debates which followed the removal of the deposit.

And now that Van Buren was at the head of the government, a party emerged from behind Jackson as the advocate of a stubborn adherence to the policy of hard money. Of this party, Silas Wright was one of the conspicuous leaders. Congress had tried to effect a repeal of Jackson's species circular in its session of 1836-1837. Calhoun had declined to vote on the bill on the ground that he believed the state of the currency to be almost incurably

bad, so that it was very doubtful whether the highest skill and wisdom could restore it to soundness. An explosion he considered inevitable, and so much the greater the longer it should be delayed. And this seems to have been the feeling of the administration better insist on the species circular and bring on the revolution than try to postpone it by make shifts. This was the negative side of the policy of this new political combination. It had also positive proposals

to make. It suggested a complete divorce of the government from the banks and proposed that this divorce should be effected by leaving the revenues of the government in the hands of the collecting officers, to be dispersed, transferred, and accounted for by them under bonds of sufficient amount to secure their fidelity. This was not a plan to regulate the currency or to relieve the financial distress. It was purely administrative in character, meant to save the government from

loss and to secure it against embarrassment by separating its affairs entirely from the hazards of banking. The Senate accepted these proposals, even adding a clause directing that all dues to the government should be paid in gold and silver. But the House tabled the measure. The four years of Van Buren's administration were spent in a persistent effort to get this bill through Congress. There were strong forces working for it, though they would seem not to have been forces of

party principle so much as influences of individual opinion. Men like Benton, for whom the policy of the government in respect of the public lands had a vitality of interest such as it did not possess for the public men of the East, felt very keenly the need for some such heroic remedy for speculation as Jackson's circular supplied. Men like Calhoun saw no use in trying to amend the bank system

and thought the maladies of the currency incurable except by acute suffering and a thorough natural purging of all morbid humors. Jackson, probably at Benton's suggestion, had committed his party to a definite course. Ben Buren meant to follow him consistently in what he had done, and the party leaders had nothing else to suggest.

49. Banking Reform, 1837-1841 The only group of politicians apparently which men knew its own mind with reference to financial policy was made up of those Democrats originally a local faction in New York and dubbed Locofocos, who thought that they detected the chief danger in the corruption incident upon the granting of bank charters in the states and in the folly of the unlimited powers of note issue conferred by those charters. They plainly avowed their unqualified hostility to bank notes and paper money as a circulating medium

and to all special grants of incorporation by state legislatures. They mustered strong enough to exercise a very considerable influence upon the state elections in New York, the President Silas Wright and Senator Benton, although not openly of their party, practically entertained their principles, and when they presently disappeared within the general body of the Democratic Party, it was rather because they had drawn it to themselves than because it had absorbed or defeated them. The loco-foco principles indeed were symptomatic of a common movement of opinion. Some efforts towards the reform of the banking system had already been made in New York, and it is noteworthy that Van Buren had played a very wise and intelligent part in what had been attempted there.

It was in accordance with suggestions contained in his message to the legislature of New York as governor in 1829 that the safety fund law had been passed which required all the banks which had been charted by the state to pay into the state treasury a certain percentage of their capital stock to serve as a fund out of which the liabilities of any of them that might fail should be made good the deposit required proved too small and a different system was presently found preferable but the safety fund was the beginning of reform In 1838, New York established a free banking system which set the fashion of reform elsewhere and which, as subsequently amended, served as a model for the excellent federal banking law of 1863. Under this system, the practice of granting special charters was abandoned.

It was to be free to any persons to form a banking company who should conform to the requirements of the Act, the leading and most important requirement being that each company should deposit securities with the state to the full amount of its circulating notes. Other states sooner or later entered upon the same line of policy. The follies and disasters of unregulated banking were at last telling upon the minds of legislators, and New York, the most party-ridden of states, led in the reform. 50. The Independent Treasury, 1840 Again and again did the administration party press the Independent Treasury scheme upon Congress. Three times was it adopted by the Senate and rejected by the House.

On the fourth trial, it passed both houses and became law, July 4, 1840. Meantime, nothing positive had been done for the relief of the financial distress of the country, and nothing permanent for the relief of the Treasury. The failure of the deposit banks, coming at the same time with the distribution of the surplus among the states, had brought actual pecuniary distress upon the government. Twice was it necessary, accordingly, to authorize the issue of Treasury notes.

In the interval between the suspension of the banks of deposit and the determination of Congress of the policy of the Treasury in the matter of the custody of the revenues, a sort of extra-legal independent Treasury arrangement had been inevitable. There was no safe place of deposit provided, and the monies collected had to be retained by the Treasury agents. The Independent Treasury Act, as finally passed, directed rooms, vaults, and safes to be provided for the Treasury in which the public money should be kept, provided for four receivers general at New York, Boston, Charleston, and St. Louis, and made the United States Mint and the branch Mint at New Orleans places of deposit, directed the Treasurers of the United States and of the Mints, the receivers general, and all other officers charged with the custody of public money to give proper bonds for the public money. its care and for its transfer when ordered by the secretary of the treasury or postmaster-general and enacted that after june 30 1843 all payments to or by the united states should be in gold and

silver exclusively the system was to be presently repealed for van buren and his party were to suffer immediate and overwhelming defeat but it was to be restored and was to become the permanent system of federal financial administration from the very first all popular influences in politics went against van buren the whole bank war had served to deepen the impression that congress and the federal government as a whole was in some very direct way responsible for the financial condition of the country jackson's bank veto and his removal of the deposits had killed the bank of the united states against the protests of congress his transference of the public monies to the state banks had led to the multiplication of local banking companies and the still more unhealthy stimulation of speculation and then after ostentatiously trusting the local banks he had it a single wanton blow destroyed them and with them all credit by his specie circular

and now his successor would mend nothing would propose nothing except that the government take care of itself by keeping its own moneys and have nothing whatever to do with any banks at all Those of his party, the while who said anything distinctly, said that gold and silver must be the currency of the country at a time when there was no gold or silver to be had. As for the people, they still believed in legislative panaceas for pecuniary distress and were beyond measure exasperated with the administration. 51. The Democrats discredited 1840. There were other causes of irritation, other influences of alienation, too, between the government and the people. The policy of arbitrary removals and partisan appointments which Jackson had adopted had early borne its natural fruit, but its demoralizing results were not fully disclosed until the administration of the ill-fated Van Buren.

Then many serious cases of mismanagement, jobbery, peculation, and fraud were discovered, and the particulars made public. Van Buren seems to have sought no concealments to have made no effort to shield any offender, but he got no credit for his uprightness. He only received blame for the establishment of a system which had made such demoralization of the civil service inevitable. It was commonly believed that he had been chiefly instrumental in importing the spoils system of New York politics into the national administration, for he had been one of the most influential members of that Albany Regency which had so long and so successfully controlled the public patronage in New York and he was known to have been the leading spirit of Jackson's administration. The suspicion was unjust. Van Buren had used the patronage in New York, but he had not fostered

the misuse of it. He had acquiesced in Jackson's methods, as did all who served Jackson, but he had not introduced these methods, and he had done something to discountenance their employment in his own department, so long as he remained a member of the cabinet, as much doubtless as his to diplomatic nature permitted, but the suspicion, although unjust, was natural, was universal, was irradicable. It damaged him as much in the general esteem as if it had rested upon

demonstration. Every question that arose seemed to bring with it some loss of prestige for the administration. A small but earnest and intense anti-slavery party had been growing and agitating since 1831. Under the influence of the feeling it had aroused, Congress was deluged with anti-slavery petitions chiefly aimed at slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and the Democratic Party had discredited itself by refusing to hear any petitions on the subject.

In the closing months of 1835, Texas had declared her independence of Mexico, and the next year Jackson accorded her diplomatic recognition. Now she was maneuvering for admission into the Union with all the Southern interests behind her. Northern men thought with alarm of her vast territory

out of which five slave states might be made. Anti-slavery feeling was intense against any dealings or parleings with her at all. Van Buren declined overtures of annexation and declared the neutrality of the United States as between Texas and Mexico, but he did it as he did all things, mildly and with prudent reserve,

and was thought by his opponents to do it against his secret desire in the matter. He handled with prudence and good judgment the troubles which had arisen upon the northeast frontier because of a boundary dispute with England, complicated by an insurrection in Canada and by lawless attempts on the part of citizens of the United States to assist the insurgents, but he exasperated the men concerned by his justice towards the rights of England.

It was under his administration that the last war with the Seminole Indians of Florida was brought to a close. But it was a costly and cruel business, and like other things, brought only criticism to the President and his advisors. These things might have been viewed more justly had the country not been passing through the fires of a prolonged financial crisis, and had it not seemed to find in the administration not only an unwillingness to do anything to relieve the distress which Jackson had caused, but obduracy and insensibility in its stubborn pursuit of its single policy of an independent treasury and hard money for the general governments,

with or without a banking system and a practicable currency for the people. Van Buren unquestionably showed throughout a fine courage and a certain elevation of view, but he was not imperative. or impressive, as Jackson was. The country had made up its mind that he was a small, selfish, incapable politician, and had judged him accordingly. Throughout the four years of the administration, the influence of the Whigs grew apace. Again and again, they carried states

which had been of the Jackson following. In 1838, they elected William H. Seward, their candidate for governor, in Van Buren's own state of New York, by a majority of 10,000. For the campaign of 1840, they again nominated General William Henry Harrison for president, as they had done four years before, and John Tyler of Virginia for vice president. The Democrats nominated Van Buren and Johnson. General Harrison had served the country honorably, both in civil and in military capacities,

as well known, and had moreover, a certain homely modesty and candor which commended him to the mass of plain men. His party proclaimed no principles except opposition to Van Buren and the Democrats but this was enough after a campaign of unparalleled excitement and enthusiasm. Harrison was elected by 234 electoral votes, to 60 for his opponent,

gearing 19 states as against 7 for Van Buren, although his popular majority was less than 150,000 in a total vote of nearly 2,500,000. The Whigs, too, were to have a majority of 47 in the House and of 7 in the Senate.

52. A New Era of Material Development, 1830-1840 The bold directness and almost lawless energy of Jackson's character were the more appreciated by his contemporaries because they seemed to epitomize the active spirit of personal initiative which quickened the whole country in his day.

The decade of 1830-1840 witnessed the beginnings of an industrial revolution in the United States. Railways began to be built. The railway map of the United States in 1830 shows four short roads with an aggregate length of 23 miles. On the map of 1840, there are lines representing an aggregate railway mileage of 2,818. These were small beginnings but deeply significant of what was to come.

The railway mileage of the country was to double thereafter every five years until the period of the Civil War. Steam boats multiplied with great rapidity upon the western rivers and on the lakes in response to the impulse which was being given to movements of population. The navigation of the ocean by vessels propelled by steam had become an established success by 1838. The utilization of anthracycone in the production of steam, 1836, and the invention of the screw propeller, 1836-38, contributing not a little to the result. On every side, mechanical invention was busy. Anthracite coal was successfully employed in the manufacture of iron in 1836.

Naysmith's steam hammer was invented in 1838. The McCormick Reaper, invented in 1834, at once simplified the cultivation of large farms with a small force of laborers and assured the development of the great grain lands of the Northwest. Even friction matches invented in 1829 ought to be mentioned as removing one of the minor inconveniences of a civilization demanding all the light it could get. This rapid multiplication and diversification of labor-saving machinery effected a radical change in economic and social conditions.

While railways were to extend population, manufacturing industries were to compact it. The homely rural nation, which in 1828 chose Andrew Jackson to be its president, was now about to produce a vast and complex urban civilization. Its old habits were to be thoroughly broken up. its railways were to produce a ceaseless movement of population section interchanging people with section the whole country thrown open to be visited easily and quickly by all who chose to travel local prejudices dislodged by familiar knowledge of men and affairs elsewhere opinions manners purposes made common and alike throughout great stretches of the land by reason of constant intercourse and united effort the laboring classes who had hitherto worked chiefly upon their own initiative and responsibility were now to be drawn together into great factories to be directed by others the captains of industry so that dangerous contrasts both of fortune and of opportunity should presently be created between capitalist and employee

individual enterprise and simple partnerships were to give place on all hands to corporations the first signs of a day of capitalistic combinations and of monopoly on the great scale began to become visible and it is noteworthy that jackson with his instinctive dread of the bank monopoly was one of the first to perceive them the nation hitherto singularly uniform in its conditions of life exhibiting almost everywhere equal opportunities of success few large fortunes and an easy livelihood for all who were industrious was now about to witness sudden enormous accumulations of wealth, to perceive sharp contrast between poverty and abundance, an ominous breaking up of economic levels. The aggregate material power of the country was to be greatly increased, but individual opportunity was to become unequal. Society was to exchange

its simple for a complex structure, fruitful of new problems of life, full of new capacities for disorder and disease. It is during this decade, accordingly, that labor organizations first assume importance in the United States in opposition to capital banks and monopolies. During the financial distresses of the period, when every hardship of fortune was accentuated, strikes, mobs, and riots became frequent and spoke of a general social ferment.

Fifty-three economic changes in the South, 1829 to 1841. The rapid material development of the period had, moreover, this profound political significance that it hastened the final sharp divergence between the North and the South, when it is considered that the power of steam upon iron rails and in the water and the multiplied forces of industry created by invention in aid of the mechanic arts

meant the accelerated growth of the West, a still more rapid development and diversification of the undertakings of manufacture, a still huger volume and a still quicker pace for commerce, and that in almost none of these things did the South as a section have any direct share whatever. It would be seen how inevitable it was that political dissension should follow such an economic separation. The South, of course, made large contributions out of her wealth

and her population to the development of the West, but this movement of Southern people did not extend the South into the West. The Southerner mixed in the new country with men from the other sections, and their habits and preferences insensibly affected his own. He was forced either to adopt ways of life suitable to the task of subduing a new soil in establishing new communities under novel conditions

or to give over competing for a hold upon the West. He was in most sections of the new territory moreover hindered by federal law from employing slave labor. In spite of all preferences or prepossessions, he ceased to be a Southerner and became a Westerner,

and the South remained a peculiar section with no real prospect of any territorial addition except on the side of Texas. 54. Structure of Southern Society 1829-1841 The existence of slavery in the South fixed classes there in a hard crystallization

and rendered it impossible that the Industrial Revolution, elsewhere working, changes so profound should materially affect the structure of our own society. Wherever slaves perform all the labor of a community and all free men refrain, as of course from meaner sorts of work, a stubborn pride of class, privilege will exist, and a watchful jealousy of interference from any quarter, either with

that privilege itself or with any part of the life which environs and supports it. Wherever there is a vast multitude of slaves, said Burke, with his tribunal profound insight into political forces, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege, not seeing there that freedom as in countries where it is a common blessing and as broad and general as the air may be united with much abject toil with great misery with all the exterior of servitude liberty looks amongst them like something that is more liberal and noble i do not mean to commend the superior morality of this sentiment which has at least as much pride as virtue in it but the fact is so in such a people the haughtiness of domination

combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. Southern society had from the first resolutely, almost passionately resisted change. It steadily retained the same organization, the same opinions, and the same political principles throughout all the period of 72 years that stretched from the establishment of the federal government to the opening of the war for its preservation. The structure of Southern society unquestionably created an

aristocracy, but not such an aristocracy as the world had seen before. It was, so to say, a democratic aristocracy. It did not create a system which jeoparded liberty among those who were free, or which excluded democratic principles from the conduct of affairs. It was an aristocracy not of blood, but of influence, and of influence exercised among equals. It was based upon wealth, but not upon the use of wealth. Wealth gave a man broad acres, numerous slaves, an easy,

expansive life of neighborly hospitality position and influence in his county, and if he chose to extend it in his state, but power consisted of opportunity and not of the pressure of the wealthy upon the poor, the coercive and corrupting efficacy of money. It was in fact not a money wealth, it was not founded upon a money economy, it was a wealth of resource and of leisured living. the life of a southern planter was in no sense a life of magnificence or luxury it was a life of simple and plain abundance a life companioned with books not infrequently oftentimes ornamented with household plate

and handsome family portraits but there was none of the teed tale of luxury a generous plenty of the larger necessaries and comforts and a leisure simply employed these were its dominant features there was little attention to the small comforts which we call conveniences there were abounding hospitality and generous intercourse but the intercourse was free unstudied in its manner straightforward hardy unconstrained and full of a truly democratic instinct and sentiment of equality many of the most distinguished southern families were without ancient lineage had gained position and influence by their own honourable successes in the new world and the small farmer as well as the great planter enjoyed full and unquestioned membership in the free citizenship of the state As Burke said, all who were free enjoyed rank and title to be respected. There was a body of privileged persons, but it could scarcely be called a class,

for it embraced all free men of any substance or thrift. Of course, not all of Southern society was rural. There was a population of the towns, the lawyers and doctors and tradesmen, and master mechanics, among whom the professional men and the men of culture, led and in a sense controlled, but where the mechanic and the tradesmen

also had full political privilege. The sentiments that characterized the rural population, however, also penetrated and dominated the towns. There was throughout Southern society something like a reproduction of that solidarity of feeling

and of interest which existed in the ancient classical republics set above whose slaves there was a proud but various democracy of citizenship and privilege. Such was the society which, by the compulsion of its own nature, had always resisted change and was too resistant until change and even its own destruction were

forced upon it by war. Although the population of the country increased in the decade 1830 to 1840 from 13 to 17 millions, and although immigration trebled between 1830 and 1837, the population of the older southern states increased scarcely at all. In 1830, Virginia had 1,211,405 inhabitants in 1840, 1,239,797. In 1830, South Carolina had 581,000. In 1840, 594,000. North Carolina had 737,000. In 1830, 753,000. In 1840, Georgia had done better, had increased her population by

more than 174,000 and had gone up from 10th to 9th place in the ranking of the states by population. Mississippi and Alabama had grown like the frontier states they were. The increase of population in the northern states had in almost every case been very much greater, while an enormous growth had taken place in the West. Ohio almost doubled her population, and Indiana quite doubled hers. Two new states also were admitted, Arkansas in June 1836 and Michigan

in January 1837. 55. An intellectual awakening 1829-1841. The same period witnessed a very notable development in the intellectual life and literary activity of the country. It was a time when the world at large was quivering under the impact of new forces, both moral and intellectual. The year 1830 marks not only a period of sharp political revolution in Europe, but also a season of awakened social conscience everywhere. Nowhere were the new forces more profoundly felt than in England, where political progress has always managed to be beforehand with revolution. In 1828, the Corporation and Task Acts were repealed.

In 1829, Catholic Emancipation was effected. In 1832, the first Reform Bill was passed. In 1833, slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire. In 1834, the system of poor relief was reformed. In 1835, the long-needed reconstitution of the government of municipal corporations was accomplished.

And in 1836, the Act for the Commutation of Tithes was adopted. Everywhere, philanthropic movements showed the spirit of the age, and in these movements the United States were particularly forward, for their liberal constitutions had already secured the political changes with which foreign nations were busy. Americans were among the first to undertake a serious and thoroughgoing reform of the system of prison discipline. It was the fame of the new penitentiary system of the United States that brought de Tocqueville and Beaumont to this country in 1831 on that tour which gave us the inimitable democracy in America. In the same year, William Lloyd Garrison established his celebrated paper, The Liberator, and the anti-slavery movement assumed a new shape to which additional importance was given in 1833 by the formation of the anti-slavery society.

Everywhere a new thoughtfulness and humanity entered into legislation, purging institutions of old wrongs, enlarging the views of statesmen and the liberties of the people. The general spiritual ferment manifested itself in such religious movements as that which came to be known as transcendentalism, in such social schemes as those of Robert Owen and the distinguished group of enthusiasts who established Brook Farm, in a childlike readiness on the part of all generous or imaginative minds to accept any new fad of doctrine that promised plausibly the regeneration of society. It was to be expected that an age in which both the minds and the hearts of men were being subjected to new excitements and stirred to new energies should see new life enter also into literature. Whole generation of new writers of originality and power accordingly came suddenly into prominence in this decade. Hawthorne began to publish in 1828, Poe in 1829, Whitman in 1831, Longfellow in 1833,

Bancroft in 1834, Emerson and Holmes in 1836. Prescott was already giving promise of what he was to do in his essays in the North American Review. It was just without this decade in 1841 that Lowell's first volume of youthful poems was given to the public. Lowell writings too were being published, which were to become classical. Kent's Commentaries on American Law appeared between 1826 and 1830. Mr. Justice's story began to publish in 1833, and by 1838 had practically

completed his great contributions to legal literature. Whedon's Elements of International Law was published in 1836. Professor Lieber put forth his first works upon the theory of law in politics in 1838. Henry C. Carey's rate of wages appeared in 1835 and his principles of political economy between 1837 and 1840. These were the years also of Audubon's contributions to natural history and of Asa Gray's first essays in botany. In 1838, James Smithson provided the

endowment of the Smithsonian Institution. All this meant something besides a general quickening of thought. America was beginning to have a little more leisure. As the material resources of the eastern states multiplied and wealth and fortune became more diffused in common, classes slowly came into existence who were not wholly absorbed by the struggle for a livelihood. There began to be time for the cultivation of taste. Higher standard of comfort and elegance

soon prevailed of which books were a natural accompaniment. Miss Martineau did not find European culture in the United States when she visited them in 1834, but she found almost universal intelligence and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Native writers embody the new ideals of the nation and spoke a new and whimsical wit. The country brought forth its own historians and storytellers, as well as its own mystics like Emerson and its own singers

to a cause like Whittier. You are a new era, my man, in your huge country, wrote Carlyle to Emerson. Newspapers, too, began to take on a new form. The life of the nation had grown too hasty, too various and complex, too impatient to know the news, and too canvassed all new opinions to put up any longer with the old and cumbersome sheets of the style inherited from colonial times. Papers like The Sun and The Herald were established in New York, which showed an energy and shrewdness

in the collection of news and an aggressiveness in assuming the leadership in opinion that marked a revolution in journalism. They created the omnipresent reporter and the omniscient editor who now help and hinder, stimulate, and exasperate us so much. It was a new era, and all progress had struck into a new pace. 56. The Extension of the Suffrage In the colonies, the suffrage had very commonly been based upon a freehold tenure of property,

and where no property qualification existed, it was customary to limit the suffrage to those who were taxpayers. In most of the older states such regulations had survived the revolution, but nowhere did they very long remain. The new states forming in the West bid for population by offering unlimited privileges to all comers. Cities grew up in which wealth was not landed, but commercial. French doctrines of the rights of man crept in through the phrases of the

Declaration of Independence. Demagogues, too, became ready to offer anything for votes in the fierce competition of parties and careful for the next election, if neglectful of the next generation, and so everywhere except in the South, a broad manhood suffrage presently came to prevail. By the close of Jackson's second term, no northern state retained any property restriction except Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, and no western state except Ohio. 57. The Reformation

of parties 1829 to 1841. Parties had taken form again while Jackson reigned. It was not easy to see the Democratic Party as a whole while Jackson was president. His personality was too dominant and the influences of the time were too personal, too complex, too obscure to make it possible to say with confidence just how much of the policy of the administration was Jackson's own, just how much suggested to him by those who enjoyed his friendship. When Van Buren becomes president,

however, the party emerges from behind Jackson. Van Buren's figure hides no other man's, and we see by reading backwards that a party of definite principles had for some time been forming. We perceive that some of the measures of Jackson's time were his own, but that the objects aimed at were not his alone, but those of a group of party leaders who stood behind him. Ben Buren, Taney, Benton, Woodbury, Cass, and others, the group for which Silas Wright spoke in Congress when he introduced the independent treasury plan.

These men would have destroyed the United States Bank, but they would never have originated the plan for removing the deposit. They wished to see a currency of gold and silver take the place of a currency of depreciated paper, but none of them, except perhaps Benton, would have hazarded so brutal a measure as the species circular. The principles of this new party were simple and consistent, and Van Buren's administration showed with how much courage they were prepared to insist upon them and carry them into execution. These principles embraced a conservative construction of the Constitution and a scrupulous regard for the limitations of the powers of Congress.

They therefore excluded the policy of internal improvements, the policy of interference with the business development of the country by means of protective tariffs, the policy of chartering a national bank and everything that looked like a trespass on the reserved rights of the states. This party wished to see the Treasury divorced from all connection with banks. It believed Specy to be the constitutional currency of the country. It desired to see as much economy and as little governing as possible. Until 1834, when it had assumed its new name, Whig, of conveniently ambiguous significance,

the National Republican Party of Clay and Adams had been too heterogeneous, too little united upon common principles, too little prepared to concert common measures, to be able to make any headway against the popularity of Jackson and the efficient organization of Jackson's followers. But by the middle of Jackson's second term it had fairly pulled itself together. By that time it had drawn several powerful factions to itself in the South,

and had brought its other adherence to something like a common understanding and mutual confidence upon several important questions of public policy. It seemed to speak again with the voice of the old Federalists, for it leaned as a whole towards a liberal construction of the constitutional powers of Congress. It believed in the efficacy of legislation to affect reforms

and check disorders in the economic life of the people. Its most conspicuous leaders were committed to the policy of large expenditures for internal improvements and to the policy of protective tariffs, and he contained, for the most part, sympathized with the men who had fought for the renewal of the Charter of the Bank of the United States. The only thing that seemed now to imperil the integrity of parties

was the anti-slavery movement. This movement originated just as Jackson came into power, had gathered head slowly, and had as yet little organic influence in politics, but it was steadily gaining a hold upon the minds of the individuals and upon certain sections of the country, and it threatened the democratic strength more than it threatened the Whig, simply because the union between the Democrats and the South was of longer standing and of greater intimacy than the

alliance between the Southerners and the Whigs. Moreover, the anti-slavery feeling very early became conspicuous in politics by means of petitions poured in upon Congress, praying against the slave trade and slavery itself in the District of Columbia and against slave trade between the states. The Democrats, under the leadership of the Southern members, committed the fatal strategic blunder of refusing to allow these petitions to be

read, printed, or referred. This, of course, gave the abolitionists an important moral advantage. John Quincy Adams, too, was now spokesman for them in Congress. He had been sent to the House of Representatives in 1831 by the anti-Masons and remained there an irrepressible champion of his own convictions until 1848. Immediately after shutting off anti-slavery petitions, Congress passed an act in still further defiance of the anti-slavery feeling.

June 7, 1836, the area of the state of Missouri and therefore of slavery was considerably increased to the westward indirect contravention of the Missouri Compromise by adding to it the territory between its old western frontier and the Missouri. 58. Character of the Jacksonian Period 1829-1841. It is not easy to judge justly the political character of this singular period as a whole. That the spoiled system of appointment to office permanently demoralized our politics

and that the financial policy of Jackson temporarily ruined the business of the country, no one can fail to see. But who can say that these movements of reaction against the older scheme of our national politics were not inevitable at some point in the growth of our restless, raw, and suspicious democracy? Jackson certainly embodied the spirit of the new democratic doctrines.

his presidency was a time of riot and of industrial revolt, of brawling turbulence in many quarters, and of disregard for law, and it has been said that the mob took its cue from the example of arbitrary temperament set it by the president. It is, however, more just to see both in the president himself and in the mobs of his time of power symptoms of one and the same thing, namely a great democratic upheaval, the willful self-resertion of a masterful people and of a

man who was their true representative the organic popular force the nation came to full self-consciousness while jackson was president whatever harm it may have done to put this man into the presidency it did the incalculable good of giving to the national spirit its first self-reliant expression of resolution and of instantaneous power end of chapter four